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On Friday, Aug. 8, 17,000 government employees in the state of Utah will have the day off.

Jealous? How about now: Those same employees will have every Friday off for the next year – without a pay cut – as the state tests out a pilot program designed to conserve energy, cut down costs and improve civil servants’ morale.

The three-day weekends will save the state an estimated $3 million in electricity alone and, presumably, make Utah the envy of government employees everywhere. The exception: police officers, prison guards, court employees and public university personnel will not be eligible. Also, state-run liquor stores will stay open on Fridays – because, really, what would be the point?

The program could help the state reduce energy consumption by 20 percent in seven years and cut CO2 emissions by around over 3,000 metric tons, said Jon Huntsman, Jr., the Republican governor of Utah.

“We have to take drastic steps,” he said. “This kind of step will help get us there.”

Utah is not carpooling this road alone: As the cost of fuel rises along with environmental concerns, an increasing number of municipalities are experimenting with 4/10 workweeks – in which business days are extended from eight hours to 10 across four days.

Public companies in California, agencies in Alabama, towns in New Jersey and county employees in Suffolk are among those offering workers longer days and shorter weeks, with lawmakers from Hartford to Denver debating the merits of making a similar switch.

But Utah will be the first to try it on such a large scale (beginning next month, most state offices will be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday), and its pilot program has stirred imaginations across the country.

“There has been a lot of interest,” said Huntsman who recently attended a National Governors Association meeting and said he fielded plenty of questions from heads of states. “We met with two or three from the West coast. The East coast may be slow on the uptake, with all due respect.”

That may be so, but with the promise of reducing everything from employee disgruntlement to a town’s carbon footprint, a few municipalities in New York and New Jersey are already turning off the lights on Thursday night.

Suffolk County, for instance, began a 90-day program this month that allows 568 nonunion employees to work staggered 4/10 workweeks to reduce gas consumption. But County Executive Steve Levy, who signed the bill, said he would instead prefer that employees take a work furlough, an unpaid day off each week, also available under the county’s plan.

The 4/10 workweek is “OK if you want to look at it from the perspective of worker convenience, but we don’t anticipate that helping us from an energy perspective because it’s very difficult to shut down county office buildings for a day,” Levy said. “Whether it’s police or parks or social services, they have to be open five days at least.”

Plus, he added, he doubts commuters with a day off will save much on gas.

“They’re still probably going to be driving to the beach or to the mall or to play golf,” he said.

Not necessarily, said some workers who have been clocking out on Thursdays for years.

“I just use that extra day to take care of responsibilities, sometimes hang out with another girlfriend,” said Shirley Dooley, 58, office manager for Nesle Inc. Two years ago, the high-end lighting company made the move from Manhattan to Queens – and to shortened workweeks.

“It’s wonderful. You can schedule your doctors appointments, you can do things that you normally have to do on weekends or after work,” Dooley said. “Most people wish they could do that.”

Utah’s Huntsman is counting on that. He hopes that the state’s hours will attract a younger generation looking for a good quality of life and environmental-conscious employment.

“We’ve had a hard time bringing in engineers into state transportation,” he said. But “over the next year the younger generation are going to look more and more at the attractiveness of state government.”

One of the most prominent downside so far has been childcare; few daycare facilities can accommodate a parent’s 10-hour workday. But the governor anticipates the expected environmental benefits could result in a wider embrace of this type of schedule – even by the private sector.

“Our chamber of commerce is talking about this,” Huntsman said. “It’s stimulated an interesting discussion that could mean a lot in terms of managing overall carbon footprint.”

For Nancy Nesle, owner of Nesle Inc., the switch had less to do with conserving electrical energy than human energy. The lighting company’s four non-union employees “were all above the age of 40,” said Nesle, 67.

“So they’re all old,” Dooley chimed in.

“Rickety and broken down. Can barely make it through four days,” Nesle said, adding, seriously, “Thinking about it, I felt people would work better and be happier.”

And it seems to have worked, but could it have worked while the company was still in Manhattan?

Nesle said she’s not sure, and it doesn’t look as though workers here will have the opportunity to find out. In Manhattan’s mass transit culture, a 4/10 workweek not only wouldn’t save a lot of gas, but it could harm local businesses, said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.

“This would have the effect of keeping people out of the Manhattan central business district, and out of our restaurants and stores,” he said, “which is not an outcome we want.”